I had just moved in, into the quietest place in town.  A sad
seed in the cold ground. This is all I can afford. A monk
would have been proud. Each turn of the key makes
claustrophobia feel a little more like home. There is a bed.
Which is empty even when I'm in it. Must be some kind of
urban magic in its making. There is a refrigerator small
enough to be a TV set. An item which is, needless to say,
absent from this pure-condominium plane of existence. There
is a small stove, a small square table. All the furniture
here seems to be stuck in an eternal stage of adolescence.
The rent is completely detached from reality, if this place
is qualified for such a compliment.  
But I was a needless man and whatever roof was held over my
head was roof enough as long as it was mine. The few clothes
that I had taken with me and the fewer that I later bought,
all fitted in a little crate-like cupboard. As treasured
utensils I had two plates, two forks, two spoons, two
glasses but somehow three knives. A medium sized bowl
supplied for other needs and finally when it cracked, it was
an excellent pot for a plant.
The bathroom, including an itchy looking toilet and a
standing shower with it's head so low it would accommodate
only the decapitated, was squeezed by some immense force (I
swear to god there were stretching marks on the walls and
corners) into a compact space next to the bed and was
separated by a wall which was mostly recycled and a door
that was meant for an even smaller and less fortunate
bathroom.
These silent roommates, as entertaining as they were in
their self-pity, never spoke beyond a long awaited squeak or
an even rarer thump. Sadly, these provided my only company.
Due to the solitary nature of my vocation, of which I shall
not speak for lack of interest, their squeaking and thumping
are my sole reminder for the existence of such concepts as
conversation, communication or even music. All I had for
entertainment was a saggy old deck of cards. So old and
tattered that the numbers were almost visible through the
backs. But I had no one to cheat, anyway. Mostly, I'd just
sit and look at the royal family. With their big expensive
clothes and their awful duality. How far must be my poverty
from them. Those unapproachable, unforgettable images of
wealth and power. But even they took part in that
never-broken vow of silence that enveloped my apartment.
This was the quiet part of town. No trains audible, no cars,
as no one could afford such luxury of transit and noise. The
men were all the large, silent types. Those who keep their
thoughts in a tight ring of hate around their hearts. This
was the part of town that life avoids. Happiness looks the
other way. All that was left of the world here was a rumor
and a slight breeze in the afternoons.
This is life for those who can barely afford to dream about
anything new or still baring its shine. And it kept us
working for that extra dollar to stuff in our ice-box or
under the straw mattress. Round here, life touched and
smelled and felt like plastic.

It was my third or fourth night in that renegade mouse-trap
dimension and the silence was starting to make me wish for
that nice chaffing sound a razor makes across a vein.  My
eyes got used to the dark much faster than my ears to that
silence. The single all-purpose lamp made more shadows than
after nightfall than light so I kept it off. The fridge
would let out a hum or a drip that would quickly evaporate
into nothingness. I learned to expect some footsteps and the
jingling of keys at some point near two. A distant turning
of a key. The soft metallic click of goodbye when the door
gently left its bolt, and the soft metallic click of hello
with its inevitable return. Always turning keys. Like
punching cards in the whacky, bankrupt factory of the
universe.
I haven't yet seen my neighbor to the left. I was almost
certain that the condo to my right was occupied by a large
family of rats. I truly believe they had much less trouble
making rent than I had. But even they, tired from a long day
of being rats, retired into the comfort of silence's lap.
I was making myself busy, trying to persuade the walls to
close in on me, when I first noticed the sighing. It was
soft, even feathery sighing, the kind made by little furry
animals when they are about to die. So close to the verge of
absolute soundlessness, that I had to convince myself I was
actually hearing them for the first few minutes. Always they
started after the turning of the key. The inescapable
closing of the door that shut each apartment into a world of
its own, sending all the others flying like soap bubbles
into the void of night.
There is a woman in the other room.
Judging from those little shades of voice, she was quite
young. There was a fullness in her voice, vitality, her
complexion I am sure was Latin. Little nose, little begging
eyes in a small, gentle face, a little cherry mouth. Her
body slender. I could not force myself from the
inevitability of her beauty. All that night my thoughts were
drained into that sweet, continuous flow of breath. I was
carried away, drifting, sailing a ship of tenderness out of
these mud-sunken slums. As soon as the silence receded,
sleep felt safe enough to emerge from her hiding place and
creep up through my nose.
She held up there till dawn came crashing through the sky
with its army of light, subduing me into a heavy awakening.
My clothes were rough with dirt and I managed to slip into
them without too much bruising. I went out the door,
carefully locking it, like a man leaving his suitcase full
of gold bars at the bus terminal.
Whatever luxuries I had, accumulated to probably no more
than dust. But to the poor, another man's dust must be worth
something. Another man's dirt and ash must surely conceal
the maharaja's gems. And anything unguarded is necessarily
undesired. It's previous owner just neglected to throw it
away. I lost my four of clubs this way. I must have
forgotten to lock the door, and my only possessions other
than the cards at the time were the old, filthy clothes and
the cold air in the fridge. I always liked the four of clubs
and tried to wear it less when I solitaired. It was the only
card still bearing all its original markings. Who could
benefit from just one card? Maybe another poor guy like me
who had his four-o-clubs mysteriously stolen. After that
incident I would lock my door securely every day before I
set to work and then half way down the first flight of
stairs, I would about-face and lock it again.
Whenever I came back, knowing of the woman next door, I made
every possible effort to prolong that moment of entry. I
would turn my key half way, then pull at the handle,
surprised at its helplessness. I would so all the way to the
end of the corridor and back, pretending to have lost my
door among an avenue of its exact doubles. I never could get
a better sign of life from that apartment than the sighing
and the turning of the keys. A less persistent man would
have written them off as ghosts. But I had my silence and
loneliness to fight off and ghosts are no help there.
Every night the sighs. Sometimes a faraway rattle. And that
woman would not leave my mind. Ad the days passed she would
differ, growing long, flowing black hair, then losing it for
a short, reddish do to go with her new dress. All the riches
my poor mind could offer, I showered. And in return she
never did cease to be angelic.
What a sad little princess she was. I never heard her
leaving her bed. All the footsteps I made out belonged to
that brute who shared the room with her. One night it crept
into my mind, that he might be keeping her tied to the bed.
The sighs became urgent that night on. The crying in them
was seeping into the walls. All those breaths that entered
so fresh and left so soaked with torment.
Here would not be too late to admit that I almost hoped for
her to be in suffering. As solitude mined deeper and deeper
inside me, I had no choice but to hope for her to be as
lonely as I. As still as we laid in our beds and the nights
rotated around us like slides from Limbo. There was so much
more I had not known: Her name, why she came here, what she
hopes for in her endless sighing? Sad little bits in the
soup of life, things that couldn't, wouldn't surface in that
surreal neighborhood of ours. Where people lead their lives
on that thin line of the turning of the keys, the slight
push inward twist-to-the-left, that bare moment between.
Between a home that has nothing to offer and a world you
have nothing to give to.
Staying on that verge for as long as I could every day, I
felt a little more of life. As the key was slowly turning in
his key hole in an eternal intercourse of steel, thought
came into my head, without shying, unlike other times. I
knew I could call a locksmith and have him open that damned
door, without him ever knowing that it wasn't mine. I could
also bust that door open and no one would know. And calling
a locksmith would cost considerably more than the pain in my
shoulder. But we pay in our humanity for things we can't
afford with cold, hard cash.

The bastard had finally changed to the night shift. I had
heard him leaving the night before. I was trying to remake
my good old four-o'-clubs with some scrap paper and coal,
when I heard the familiar key-turning, lacking the ever
precedent sound of footsteps approaching down the corridor.
When these small moments of change are the only friends in
your universe, you take a certain notice to details. When
all substance is lacking, there is no finer comradery than
in small detail. I knew he was leaving. The moment was all
in reverse. I passed the getting up and walking stages and
was at my door, unlocking, as soon as I had realized the
fortune I had been endowed. But that was only enough for a
brown shirt fading away in the dark of the end of the
corridor.
Who is he? Husband, Brother, Friend, Father? With each
naming, his jailor's hands grew thicker and her sighing took
on the desperation of a lover who had lost her man. The
sighs grew farther apart. Some calm had set on her when he
took away. He was certainly a burden to her! An obstacle! A
difficulty endured! I stayed all night with my head to her
against the cold peeling paint. At some point during the
night I realized in terror, I was only wiling to accept one
of two options for reality: either the wall wasn't really
there, or she wasn't. My mind had discarded every trace of
separation.
The night was closing onto dawn when I became aware to
having held my breath in the long intervals between sighs. A
mighty action was brewing inside me. All the pointless
shifts between night and day will come to a final halt at
dusk when I meet that burly man and peer into his den like a
thief, like a navigator through a storm, like a prince
reclaiming the last piece of his kingdom.

The air outside was cold with residues of night. Little
drops emerged on the rusty rail of our fifth-floor corridor.
Little islands of water on an ocean of years old metal. As
the sky sizzled slowly into dawn, I stood waiting, like an
old woman, waiting at the docks for a sailor she once knew
to come again.
He was coming now. Not a sound had stirred yet from the
rising morning, but I could feel the air in front of his
door becoming condensed, tense. The ancient ritual of
habitat and denizen. From a certain distance, begins a
magnetic attraction between them.
I put one hand on the cold wet rail to feel it shake once.
Someone. Someone was coming up. I kept my guard. The bare
light was tightening itself to the pale sky. I stood quiet
at my door, prepared for man or beast or clash of rhinos to
come stampeding down the hallway. A minute later came a man.
An empty man. He did not see me. Couldn't. He wouldn't see
past his own door. He needs nothing now but his fortress and
his queen. And as sleep was pulling down my neck, so did I.

When he came closer, I saw how plain his clothes were. How
obvious a monument to such shameful poverty. His hand went
mechanically into his pocket. His legs were thick and slow.
His eyes were full of that blackening glow of
unconsciousness. Up he goes for the lock. A shiny key
extended as an ultimate plea for home, for refuge. My red
eyes saw a cheap band on his finger, his rugged labor
hardened hand. This man was, among other things, a husband.

Stunned by the sting of that possibility, I barely made it
to peek through the closing door. If his cell is anything
like mine, I should have straight view to the bed at the
very end of the room, tight against the wall.  In a second
that was lengthened beyond reason, I peered through.
Outside, the light was still a timid, dusk-like glow. Inside
was pitch black, except for a few pioneering beams that
stretched somewhat across the yellow walls.
I heard him huffing, his breath still hung in the air in
front of me. The smell of coffee made my stomach turn.
Deeper, deeper, past table and fridge and a small radiator,
in that primordial cave, I saw a shine. Eyes flickered in
the distance. I know they were eyes for they blinked and
reopened. A black form in its blacker coffin home. She saw
me. And I was daylight to her. Those eyes, like a cat's, ran
through the room and struck me. I leaned back, feeling the
cold, rugged rust against my arm. My skin crawled up and
down, trying to escape the eerie sensation of the rail. The
door gently shut itself, rejecting all light and vision.
I went back, swaying to my room. Sitting in silence on my
barren bed. My wretched soul started drooling for those
shining jewels in the dark. I know I had fallen asleep
because I had a very strange dream.

In my dream I get up, not one moment after I set down and
come to knock on his door. The air is still heavy with his
presence, but the door does not open and no noise comes from
within. I send three more knocks echoing through the morning
and then I kick down the door. It falls slowly to the floor,
not making a sound. It is still somewhat dark inside the
apartment, despite the increasing redness of the sky. Her
eyes are gone and as I approach, I see him sitting, bigger
than usual, next to the bed, which is perfectly made and
empty.
I scream at him without sound or words, but he just stares
at me. His eyes are dull, like a cow's eyes. Suddenly he is
fat, outrageously fat! And a dumb smile expands on his face.
A smile of a man who had wet himself in front of a room full
of people.
The bed is shrieking to me with its emptiness, those eyes
keep burning even though they're gone. The cow-eyed slob
before me shakes his head in ecstasy at my distress. I grab
the key ha had in his hand and lift it up, shining, just
like he did a minute ago. Higher and higher and the light
breaks on the key, blinding. I reach higher up, aiming for
some misplaced key-hole. His distorted face becomes too much
and I swing down the key right across it. No blood, he's
like clay, the wound opens like another crooked smile on his
pasty, meaty face. With another swift gesture of my new
found weapon I gut him. His massive stomach split and a
choking smell of coffee and eggs spills out to fill the
room.
The fat man is empty. She's not there. I spit in his broken
face and run out of the room. Maybe I misheard. Maybe it was
the room further down, or on the floor above me? Could it be
that the rats had her? I had to know, to find, I ran,
possessed. Knocking every door down from its hinges. And
behind each one, were the table and the fridge and the small
radiator, swimming in shadows and the fat cowman with his
busted gut and face. And that awful nauseating stench...
Every door... I go past; go back I run through the corridor
and up the stairs. Door to door, floor to floor, my fingers
bleeding from all the rust on the rails of this infinite
dimension of deranged condominium.

The morning silence is brutally filled with raw, beastly
laughter. Fatman's laughter. He is sitting in every room,
laughing a boasting, prideful laughter. For he had taken her
away, far away as possible. He had made her a queen
somewhere, a happy queen. Taught her to sneer at my image.
Taught her contempt for the ragged and the poor.
He is getting up from the bed, with his guts hanging down
open and bare. And he is looking at me as I break down
another door and this time it is my door, my table, my
fridge.  And he is holding up a card. I can only see the
back of it but it is clean and unworn. And the fat man keeps
laughing, fat, heavy laughter. Laughing from his stomach
with its terrible hollow ring.

I wake up into the purest silence. Not one sigh is heard
again through the wall. I take out my cards and pick up
where I left last night. After a few shuffles, a single
siren comes tearing through my little room. My concentration
breaks and the deck drops to the dusty floor. I hurry out
the door. Some doctor is already climbing up the trembling
stairs with a cautious, education walk. The door to my left
was open to a crack. The air was cold and manless. I stood
next to my door, hand shaking on the rail.
When they took her out, they never bothered with a sheet.
She was old. Old and sick, the neighbors said through other
walls the following days. Her hands were twisted, clutching
at some invisible instrument, holding onto her life with
crooked hooks. Her skin was paper dry and transparent; she
wore it like a prison. Her hair was grey with still some
small patches of black, but it was thin and stringy. She
seemed so small in her stretcher. So minute in the world,
all the fuss was too much for this little lump of whitish,
sickly life. I stood fixed, with my eyes painfully caressing
her frayed features. She looked like an appetizer for some
hungry hound of death.
But in that broken frame, I could still see her eyes. Old
and sick and blind, did they say? But she still had the same
look she gave me when I first saw her. That pleading look of
youth and beauty begging for salvation before death sets in.


How she had grown so old so fast, I'll never know. No more
than I know of my own old age. It too came just as quickly,
trapped me still in that apartment. In that hollow part of
town. In the same room where nothing ever creaks or cracks
during the night.
In that renegade dimension of poverty, where men can be
thieves and heroes and old dying hags can be angles.
Keys still turn, as they always will and footsteps keep
walking to and fro.
My bed remained empty for years and years on end and as each
day faintly surrenders to night, I lay on that bed of nails
that silence is.
And a stern realization tightly grips my heart.
No sound will ever come again to keep sleep away.
Warding off the fear, I sigh once and in the void
I sigh again. And again.
Begging the night for compassion.